Sunday, February 8, 2015

Draft Dodgers and
Oligarchs’ War

In recent blogs, posts and tweets, I wrote about the
disturbing revelation of draft dodgers
in Ukraine. With their homeland in a life-and-death war with Russia, young
men are using every opportunity to avoid enlisting in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, instead choosing life in the near or far
diaspora as a way of saving themselves.

What was most startling about this news was that the young
men come mostly from western Ukraine,
the heart of patriotic, nationalistic Ukraine that in the past proudly sent its
heroic boys to fight for and defend Ukraine’s sovereign independence.

I first read about Ukrainian draft dodgers on a reliable Ternopil-based news website. The local
draft board had raised a warning about the high number of young men who had
refused to report for military duty, despite appealing to their sense of patriotism.
The official noted that the potential recruits decided to avoid the issue by hightailing
to any one of the diaspora communities around the world through Ukraine’s porous border with its eastern European
neighbors. From there to the USA, Canada or elsewhere is not a great
complication because most families in western Ukraine have relatives in the
diaspora who will be cajoled into providing them with necessary documents.

Thinking that these young men are consciously abandoning
Ukraine in its time of dire need, I suggested that they should be greeted with white feathers in New York City,
Chicago, Toronto or other towns.

However, a few days later I read in the same Ternopil
website that the issue has not simply been escaping from Ukraine to avoid
military service. Sounding somewhat akin to conscientious objectors, these unwilling conscripts were expressing
their disdain for draft corruption and favoritism of the elite, while denouncing
the 12-month-old war with Russia as an oligarchs’
war. I inquired with urban and rural Ternopil residents and learned that
contrary to the early bravado of enlisting and fighting the heathen Russians,
today young men are reluctant to enlist because, as they charged, “the
oligarchs aren’t fighting, they’re only mobilizing the underprivileged.” Rural
residents have even blocked draft board officials’ access to their towns and
villages.

“The oligarchs aren’t going to fight, the deputies
(parliamentarians) aren’t going to fight, their sons aren’t going, nobody is
going. Only the children of the poor from the villages are being mobilized,
those who can’t buy their way out,” an angry resident of Ostapye was quoted as
saying.

This is an incredible turn of events in Ukraine, which has
undergone a major political and national transformation since the second Maidan that ousted corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Russian
band of thieves. The scorn against Yanukovych has been so vitriolic since then that
the Verkhovna Rada was forced to formally retract his questionably obtained
title of President of Ukraine.

The new, promising pro-Ukrainian leadership, beginning with
President Petro Poroshenko and Prime
Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, who
everyday demonstrate a high dose of patriotism and scrupulousness in running
Ukraine, is not fulfilling its mandate of transparency
beginning with themselves thus angering the people. It’s become a public secret
that Poroshenko has not divested himself of his candy factory in Russia and
ship building yard in occupied Crimea.

My airborne friend from Lviv confirmed this contempt by
youth, saying draft-aged men from rural districts are not inclined to enlist
when the President’s 26-year-old son is serving in parliament rather than on
the frontlines of the war.

“Why is the recruit provided with clothes, footwear,
equipment, flak jackets, helmet, sleeping bag, etc., by his family and village
(and even the diaspora – TC)? Why are children of parliamentarians,
prosecutors, judges and cops continuing to go to restaurants and drive around
in jeeps costing 50-100,000 bucks?” he rhetorically asked.

Indeed, residents of one community not far from Ternopil has
been sending weekly to the front lines a truck filled with food and supplies for
their native sons.

Is petty and grand
larceny, corruption and vice irreversibly ingrained in the Ukrainian mentality? Ukrainians continue to live
by the adage why buy something when you can steal it – favors, positions,
placement, laws and regulations, permits, academic grades, diplomas and draft
exemptions – just like their parents and grandparents did in Soviet times.

And almost simultaneously England’s The Guardian published
an article “Welcome to Ukraine, the Most
Corrupt Nation in Europe.”

Its editors questioned: “While the conflict with Russia
heats up in the east, life for most Ukrainians is marred by corruption so
endemic that even hospitals appear to be infected. Can anyone clean the country up?”

The newspaper further observed: “Kyiv has a grand opera
house, cathedrals, chain stores, sweeping central avenues, a metro, everything
required to make a place look European. But it resembles a modern European
capital city only in the way the Cancer Institute resembles a hospital.
Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – the most widely
used indicator of corruption worldwide – rates Ukraine 142nd in the world,
alongside Uganda. In the latest ranking, it fell behind Nigeria.

“Since 1991 (the year Ukraine declared its independence from
the USSR), officials, members of parliament and businessmen have created
complex and highly lucrative schemes to plunder the state budget. The theft has
crippled Ukraine. The economy was as large as Poland’s at independence, now it
is a third of the size. Ordinary Ukrainians have seen their living standards
stagnate, while a handful of oligarchs have become billionaires.”

Sadly, a high level of corruption still exists in Ukraine
despite three government ministers who participated in the Maidan revolution
and another three who came from outside Ukraine, including one from the United
States. One must believe that the government’s efforts to save Ukraine from
drowning in a cesspool of vice are
continuing at a hectic pace, but unfortunately they seem inadequate due to the
depth of poisonous sludge that has stigmatized the people and country. And now
this toxic condition threatens Ukraine’s ability to fight an already unequal
war with its archenemy, Russia.

“What is most important, in my opinion, is that not one
reform has been initiated, no one has been brought to justice for the crimes on
Maidan, the destruction of the army, judges on the take, and so on. So a third
Maidan is brewing and it will be more fearsome and cruel. The people are
tolerant because of the war but at any moment this cup can overflow,” my friend
observed.

He said Poroshenko and Yatseniuk must stay in Ukraine,
actively pursuing reforms rather than showing off their English-language skills
during jaunts to Europe and the USA.

“There are good people who continue to travel abroad for
work to earn money for their families. And you can’t deny that there are enough
of others who continue to undermine the army but then there were enough of them
at all times,” he said.

Ukraine’s corruption crisis does not exonerate the draft
dodgers or relieve them of their military obligation especially with Russia
waging a war against their country; and the diaspora should not be handing out
white feathers to all young men from Ukraine encountered outside of churches in
the USA or Canada.

Ukraine should not be viewed through rose-colored glasses, but at the same time this internal catastrophe
should not discourage Ukrainians in Ukraine and diaspora as well as the USA and
other countries from supporting Ukraine’s
war effort. Americans should still urge the White House and Congress to
provide Ukraine with essential lethal
military aid to subdue and repel Russia from Ukraine.

But needless to say, Ukrainians themselves must do more to overcome
the disease of corruption. And the lion’s share of the responsibility of eliminating dishonesty rests solely with the
government leaders of Ukraine, President Poroshenko and Prime Minister
Yatseniuk, generally regarded as saviors of Ukraine. They must do everything
possible to rid Ukraine of this blight and be worthy of the blood Ukrainians
are shedding in battle with Russian terrorists.